What I wish I'd known: MPC ONE

EnochLight wrote:Interesting perspective. I can see how points 1 and 2 may be an issue, but 3... I actually warmed up to the included Air effects in standalone. Side note: I also have an Alesis Nanoverb, and I can't say the difference is enough to warrant any complaints. That's a digital effects box as well, and just has a different character. In fact, the Nanoverb's delay was always noisy to me, and flange is just "meh".

But, to each their own. I don't have a 1K so I can't comment on its effects versus what comes on the One/Live/X. That said, all of the "producers" seem to wax lovingly on Air's effects which all were on Pro Tools for years, so the fact that these don't satisfy you on your One is intriguing.

NearTao wrote:My first MPC was a 1k, and absolutely loved graduating to JJOS. Like you, I got a *lot* of mileage out of that old dog. I can certainly understand a lot of your comments, though for much of it I can think of process differences or possible workarounds in the new MPC One/Live/X system. For me, the biggest complaint has just been the overall downgrade for how a lot of the sampler modulation and routing was handled on the 1k with JJOS. There's a bit of a step down, that the newer product line just hasn't stepped in to cover, at least yet.

1) Yeah, I get that the mixing can feel a bit wonky, though my view point has been that it is more flexible to meet the mixing at the level that you want. I can hear you though, between pad, program track, then throw in sub mixer and returns, and master... it starts to add up. On the other hand though, you have so much more routing capabilities on Ableton that can lead to far more confusion, so I'm a little shocked you're giving the newer MPCs a knock here. I get it, it can be complicated... but the way that JJOS managed this was fairly similar, and to me, was a bit more obtuse because you didn't have a one up page to manage it, instead you'd have to dip into programs, mix, etc... *shrug* for me, but I'd say it's worth dipping your toes into more to understand.

2) Yeah, this just sucks. You can drop your audio tracks as a sample and play them as a one shot, and this'll get you pretty far towards what you want... but yeah... it is not ideal.

3) This is totally in the subjective space of what you like, what you listened to in the past reinforcing what you like now space. Personally I was never in love with the 1k effects, and found that only having two was limiting to me, so I was always dumping to off board gear to do external processing and then bringing it back in. Having access to all the Air FX has been pretty handy for me, since I do find it helpful to chain things together in the box more rather than digging around to external gear. Totally depends on your workflow though... and yeah... we like what we like.

Keep posting your thoughts... I'm always interested to see how other people think about this stuff, and there is often not a right or wrong answer... just taste and workflow

champtracks wrote:3. FX are not my cup-o-tea. This might be down to personal taste, but overall everything sounds a bit “smudgy”. I’ve had best results going for subtle lo-fi fx, but everything else seems to cloud my sound and the compressors tend to wipe out the dynamics. I guess I assumed digital FX in 2020 would be better than my 1996 alesis nanoverb, apparently not. Certainly nowhere near the 1k effects, which had a lot of character.

Lampdog wrote:

champtracks wrote:3. FX are not my cup-o-tea. This might be down to personal taste, but overall everything sounds a bit “smudgy”. I’ve had best results going for subtle lo-fi fx, but everything else seems to cloud my sound and the compressors tend to wipe out the dynamics. I guess I assumed digital FX in 2020 would be better than my 1996 alesis nanoverb, apparently not. Certainly nowhere near the 1k effects, which had a lot of character.

You are underestimating the fx (I did that at first too). Play with them more, every knob, many different types of samples,, etc. Compressors wiping out dynamics is controlled by you, tweak, tweak and more tweak. People can even email you effects patches when you need further help.

I run my Moog through X’s fx often and X also turned out to be a damn good pass through fx box imo.

champtracks wrote:Awesome! Thanks man, I'll stick with it.

champtracks wrote:
1. The mixer is not a mixer – at least not a traditional mixer like on JJ, Ableton, Cubase or any other DAW on the planet. Instead of a single track mixer with faders and pots there is a number of pad layout mixers on separate pages, one for programs, one for midi tracks, audio tracks, returns etc etc. It’s a bit mad, I can’t get my head around the thought process behind the design, is this common to other non-JJ MPC’s? It’s not a massive issue for production as you can take your time to navigate the pages, but for live performing it’s a major setback. No live mixing.

champtracks wrote:2. Audio tracks are excluded from Track Mute. Major bummer, it means I can't use audio tracks in a live performance. Again, this doesn't really affect production, other than workflow speed, but it renders audio tracks pretty much useless for live if you can't get to them from track mute or the aforementioned non-mixer in one click.

champtracks wrote:3. FX are not my cup-o-tea. This might be down to personal taste, but overall everything sounds a bit “smudgy”. I’ve had best results going for subtle lo-fi fx, but everything else seems to cloud my sound and the compressors tend to wipe out the dynamics. I guess I assumed digital FX in 2020 would be better than my 1996 alesis nanoverb, apparently not. Certainly nowhere near the 1k effects, which had a lot of character.

champtracks wrote:So that’s all I have right now. I might post some more points as I encounter them, if I think they’re useful to anyone considering the jump to ONE. Right now I’m looking back at the 1k in the corner of my room with rose tinted glasses, wondering, should I just learn to hit stop start with perfect timing?

Lampdog wrote:You are underestimating the fx (I did that at first too). Play with them more, every knob, many different types of samples,, etc. Compressors wiping out dynamics is controlled by you, tweak, tweak and more tweak. People can even email you effects patches when you need further help.

I run my Moog through X’s fx often and X also turned out to be a damn good pass through fx box imo.

NearTao wrote:@Lampdog... I'd go so far as to say that the defaults for most of the Akai One/Live/X effects are awful and in no way show what you can get out of them. Scrolling beyond Init will often give you a lot of variety that Init just falls flat on. Agree here, tweaking is essential to really learn the character, they do actually go beyond skin deep as it were.

Cockdiesel wrote:You can mute the audio tracks by hitting the audio tab and then mute. I don’t think this would be much of an obstacle even for live use.